Juan Cristobal Castro-Alonso

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• PhD in Education
• Assistant Professor in Educational Psychology at University of Birmingham

Instructional dynamic pictures (animations and videos) contain transient visual information. Consequently, when learning from dynamic pictures, students must process in working memory the current images while trying to remember the images that left the screen. This additional activity in working memory may lead dynamic pictures to be less suitable...

Depletion of limited working memory resources may occur following extensive mental effort resulting in decreased performance compared to conditions requiring less extensive mental effort. This “depletion effect” can be incorporated into cognitive load theory that is concerned with using the properties of human cognitive architecture, especially wor...

When dealing with instructional information, working memory can be divided into auditory and visual processors. The capacity limits of each processor are a major impediment when students are required to learn new material. Nevertheless, there is one strategy that can effectively expand working memory capacity by using the partially independent stat...

Researchers of cognitive load theory and the cognitive theory of multimedia learning have identified several strategies to optimize instructional materials. In this review article we focus on five of these strategies or solutions to problematic instructional designs in multimedia learning: (a) the multimedia principle (use visualizations and drawin...

Multimedia pedagogical agents are on-screen characters that allow users to navigate or learn in multimedia environments. Several agents’ characteristics may moderate their instructional effectiveness, including appearance, gender, nonverbal communication, motion, and voice. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis to test hypotheses from diverse theories...

Assessing cognitive demand is crucial for research on self-regulated learning; however, discrepancies in translating essential concepts across languages can hinder the comparison of research findings. Different languages often emphasize various components and interpret certain constructs differently. This paper aims to develop a translingual set of...

Research on embodied cognition acknowledges that cognitive processing is tightly coupled with bodily activities and the environment. An important implication for education is that learning can be enhanced when the brain, body, and environment mutually influence each other, such as when making or observing human actions, especially those involving h...

The mechanisms that govern biological evolution and human cognition are analogous, as both follow the same principles of natural information processing systems. In this article, we describe the following five principles that provide an analogy between biological evolution and human cognition: (a) Randomness as Genesis Principle and (b) Borrowing an...

The interleaving effect indicates that students learn better from multiple areas that are interleaved rather than blocked. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that the effect is because interleaving facilitates comparisons between areas and is a variation of the variability effect that increases intrinsic cognitive load. Experiment 1 used an inte...

Background and Aims: The long-standing aim of cogni-tive load theory (CLT) has been to generate instructional design principles that show teachers how to instruct students effectively, based on knowledge of the intricacies of human cognitive architecture. Historically, the focus of CLT has been on identifying cognitive processes related to learning...

Background As a result of the COVID‐19 pandemic, many teachers found themselves making a rapid and often challenging shift from in‐person classroom teaching to teaching in an online environment. As teachers continue to learn about working in this new environment, research in cognitive and learning sciences, specifically findings from cognitive load...

Currently, the physics disciplines are represented by a significantly larger number of professional males, compared to females. Although the problem of underrepresentation of female physicists has several causes, one likely reason is the lower interest that female school students have in physics activities. Several instructional solutions have been...

Poster based upon paper: Sepp, S., Wong, M., Hoogerheide, V., Castro-Alonso, J.C.(2021) Shifting Online: 12 Tips for Online Teaching Derived from Contemporary Educational Psychology Research. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Using cannabis (e.g., smoking marijuana) is becoming popular, partly due to a legalization trend across different countries. This tendency has resulted in cannabis consumption being accepted by society as if it were harmless. However, evidence shows that the use of this drug has detrimental effects on cognitive, academic, and professional performan...

Cognitive load theory is a leading instructional theory in research about the effectiveness of multimedia and computer-based learning. The theory is continually updating itself with new experimental findings, such as those in the six empirical papers of this special issue. Specifically, the focus of this special issue is on novel cognitive load the...

The modality effect, which has been investigated by cognitive load theory, predicts that learning from visualizations supplemented with written text should be less effective than learning from the same visualizations supplemented with comparable spoken text. An explanation of the effect assumes a degree of separation between the processing of visuo...

One potential advantage and special feature of animations is the capability of depicting change. However, from a learning perspective this advantage is often lost due to the negative effects of transient information. This chapter discusses some of the issues associated with learning from animations, but also explores how problem complexity (element...

This chapter outlines a number of factors that have impacted the research into instructional animations. It describes how the findings from comparisons between animations and statics, the major research paradigm, has found mixed results showing that animations are not always more effective than equivalent static pictures. We also describe some moun...

The visuospatial processor of working memory is used for manipulations of visual and spatial information, such as mental rotation and mental folding, and consequently plays an essential role in learning from static and dynamic visualisations in multimedia materials. Learners showing low scores in tests of visuospatial abilities (e.g., mental rotati...

Embodied cognition acknowledges that cognition does not only happen in the mind, but also in the body and environment. When they act together, such as when executing or observing human actions, several cognitive processes can be boosted. In this chapter, we describe diverse research perspectives to explain and predict embodied phenomena. We have gr...

Research suggests that many educational phenomena depend on visuospatial processing, including science learning, multimedia interactions, visualizations, gesturing, and object manipulations. However, little is known about what specific abilities rely on visuospatial processing in any given learning scenario, including those about health and natural...

Visuospatial processing is controlled by specialized systems of working memory and is relatively independent of verbal processing. In addition, visual and spatial information also tend to be independently processed. These separate visual and spatial processes result in different cognitive abilities to be controlled by visuospatial processing. Cogni...

One of the few cognitive areas in which sex differences can be found is in visuospatial processing abilities. The different abilities show different degrees of sex differences, generally favoring men over women. For example, the largest effects for men are reported on mental rotation tasks, particularly those using three-dimensional shapes. Mental...

Diverse interactive multimedia products are developed for university students in health and natural sciences. These different multimedia tools allow exchanges of information with the students. In these exchanges, the students provide cognitive engagement, and the multimedia responds with feedback. The multimedia products that allow the highest leve...

There are basically two formats used in instructional visualizations, namely, static pictures and dynamic visualizations (e.g., animations and videos). Both can be engaging and fun for university students in the fields of health and natural sciences. However, engagement by itself is not always conducive to learning. Consequently, teachers, lecturer...

This volume of eight chapters, including the present overview, describes several variables affecting the relationship between visuospatial processing and education in health and natural sciences. The scope of the volume is on adult university students executing the small-scale visuospatial processing abilities investigated by the research tradition...

Visuospatial processing is a key asset for thriving in health and natural sciences education and practice. Two critical reasons for this importance are that (a) science phenomena are often represented visuospatially, and (b) science is communicated among professionals by means of visual and spatial information. Furthermore, there is a reciprocal re...

Studies comparing the instructional effectiveness of dynamic versus static visualizations have produced mixed results. In this work, we investigated whether gender imbalance in the participant samples of these studies may have contributed to the mixed results. We conducted a meta-analysis of randomized experiments in which groups of students learni...

Studying and pursuing careers of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields demand spatial ability. Completing a university degree in biology is no exception. The aim of this study is to summarize key findings showing that there is a two-way relation between university biology education and spatial ability. The first aspect of...

Visuospatial processing is key to learn and perform professionally in the domains of health and natural sciences. As such, there is accumulating research showing the importance of visuospatial processing for education in diverse health sciences (e.g., medicine, anatomy, surgery) and in many natural sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, physics, geolo...

According to the concept of desirable difficulties, introducing difficulties in learning may sacrifice short-term performance in order to benefit long-term retention of learning. We describe three types of desirable difficulty effects: testing, generation, and varied conditions of practice. The empirical literature indicates that desirable difficul...

Performance in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines can depend on the sub-abilities of spatial ability and visuospatial working memory. According to the STEM task, certain sub-abilities may be more important than others in predicting achievement. Similarly, some individual characteristics (e.g., gender) moderate some...

Instructional animation research has been extensive but the results are inconsistent. Amongst a number of possible factors to explain these inconclusive results (e.g., the negative influence of transient information), the influence of spatial ability and gender are less explored. This paper reports three experiments that compared the effectiveness...

An embodied cognition perspective recognizes that the evolution of the human mind has been shaped by the evolution of the species’ whole body in its interaction with the environment. For example, hand actions—such as object manipulations and gestures—have been fundamental for human survival, and thus they continue to trigger different areas of the...

Humans have an evolved embodied cognition that equips them to deal easily with the natural movements of object manipulations. Hence, learning a manipulative task is generally more effective when watching animations that show natural motions of the task, rather than equivalent static pictures. The present study was completed to explore this research...

Due to their popularity, dynamic visualisations (e.g. video, animation) seem attractive educational resources. However, in the design of any instructional material, not only must the appealing factor be acknowledged, but also the cognitive limitations. To consider the limitations of human cognitive architecture when designing instructional resource...

We have mutagenized a clinical strain of Salmonella enterica sv. typhi with mini-transposon Tn10dTet (T-POP) to obtain conditional lethal (tetracycline-dependent) mutants with T-POP insertions upstream of essential genes. Generalized transducing phage P22 was used to introduce T-POP from a S. typhimurium donor into a S. typhi recipient. Chromosomal...

Incluye resumen en inglés. Tesis (Bioquímico)--Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2002. Incluye bibliografía.